PayPal is opening up a showroom in downtown New York that will demo in-store mobile payments through NFC and other channels, according to GigaOM.
PayPal, which has been reticent to adopt NFC payments due to a perceived “lack of traction,” has now added a “tap phone” option that enables customers to simply tap their phone at the point of sale to complete transactions. GigaOM notes that the feature does not represent a full commitment to NFC payments, but leaves the option open should the market lean toward that direction.
“If NFC gets to the point where retailers are adopting it at the point of sale and consumers are showing a propensity for using it, we will enable it, but we are not depending on it,” Sam Shrauger, PayPal’s vice preisdent of Global Product and Design, explained to GigaOM. “There’s no time frame for NFC, it just depends on the way the market moves. It could be next year or in five years.”
The showroom, which opens this Thursday and continues through February, will provide merchants with a demonstration of PayPal’s new mobile shopping solution - an app that combines mobile advertising, offers, online price comparisons and mobile payments at the point of sale. PayPal says the solution can be used on existing smart phones and does not require merchants to buy new point of sale hardware.
PayPal is to begin in-store tests of the solution later this quarter with an unnamed major retailer, according to GigaOM.
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